By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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Reaching Out … While Respecting Boundaries (1502 Words)
(56th and 57th Days of School – October 27–28 2025)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
I. Grace Extended Across Loss
These days began with quiet gestures that mattered more than the lessons on the board.
I wrote CoachBD to offer condolences for the recent loss of his father … and included two essays ... Remembering Grandmama and Remembering Grandmama (Part 2) ... hoping that the reflection might meet his grief … where words often fail.
His reply confirmed that it did.
He shared that his father had entered his life when he was thirty … and that the short years they had together still taught him how to be a better man … that gratitude could coexist with regret.
It was an honest, masculine confession ... a reminder that writing can perform quiet pastoral work when handled with care.
Later, I visited JAL to offer condolences for multiple family losses within his wife’s family.
He spoke of how one death had been expected … while another was sudden.
That difference opened a conversation about the varied rhythms of grief … and how husbands can support their wives when mourning becomes daily atmosphere.
We spoke not as teachers … but as men learning to be gentle.
These encounters re-anchored me before stepping again into classrooms where gentleness is tested hourly.
II. Bounded Grace in Instruction
Over the weekend, I graded and posted unit-test scores.
The process demanded both accuracy and mercy.
Each class received a slightly different tone of encouragement ... one that balanced truth with grace.
I reminded them that the path to higher scores requires completion of the provided study guide and key … documents that practically give away the test.
I cautioned against shortcuts ... the Chromebook “misuse”, the whispered answers, and the copy-and-paste habits that trade honesty for haste.
I told them that grades of “68” often represent grace that disguises how poor the work truly is ... camouflage to protect confidence while truth finds its footing.
I knew the risk … such candor can sound like criticism.
Students often receive my reflective addresses as sermons directed at someone else … like the “bad and dumb” classmates they think they exceed.
They “tune out” precisely when they should “tune in.”
Two students, JV and ER, earned perfect scores … yet declined public praise.
They said that they had simply studied the key and followed instructions.
MG, who earned a 99, credited paying attention in her support class ... which “lags” my geometry class by one day ... and completing the study guide.
None of them turned in a finished guide, but they worked through it privately.
That imperfect diligence was enough.
Their restraint in seeking recognition was its own lesson in maturity.
III. Teaching with Boundaries and Brevity
At the close of 1A, PCC and TW called me a “wise man.”
I smiled and replied that a wise man knows his limitations … and sets boundaries accordingly.
In 1A, that wisdom means teaching with brevity, enthusiasm, and clarity ... then allowing silence to finish the lesson.
We explored dilations … first with two large plastic triangles of different sizes … then with figures on the XY-plane … then through numerical scale factors that stretch or shrink coordinates.
The concept was visible, tangible, and repeated in multiple languages of learning.
After demonstration came the boundary.
I assigned the work, sat at my desk, and listened to them reteach one another in what they believed was simpler language.
They echoed my explanations almost verbatim, but were convinced that they had reinvented them.
This performance of autonomy is developmental progress … disguised as independence.
Letting them struggle within structure is the pedagogy of patience.
RG tested the edges of that patience with a request to “go look in the bathroom mirror” … after being reported as AWOL by another teacher the previous week.
He admitted to skipping class.
I reminded him that desire must travel through discipline … that permission is earned, not granted through entertainment.
DL approached next, asking for “help.”
When I asked what kind, he hesitated ... then realized his question was answerable by thought, not rescue.
He had to determine coordinates from a graphed figure … rather than graph coordinates already given.
I stayed silent.
He answered his own question.
Moments earlier he had asked whether “>” meant greater than or less than … while a idle Chromebook sat in front of him.
The contrast … and irony … were both meaningful.
He was beginning to think before asking.
That small victory revealed the boundary’s value.
Guidance withheld becomes growth realized.
IV. Revisiting Old Wounds to Redraw Lines
In 3B, I shared a memory from September 18 ... the day CM emerged to explain why I used parentheses to avoid sign errors in the distance formula.
Before he could finish, MM2 cut him off by announcing that CM had failed geometry the previous year.
The cruelty was surgical.
The class laughed, and something in me broke quietly.
Today I retold that story.
MM1 glanced at MM2 knowingly as I expressed disgust at the unnamed offender.
My intention was not vengeance, but moral recalibration.
I wanted MM2 to hear that the event marked her in my awareness ... not as an enemy, but as one I might need to watch.
That day became the origin of her later seat change … and the persistent personal friction that followed.
Now I may be able to enlist MM1 to help me “redeliver” the message ... that respect remains the non-negotiable boundary in our fellowship.
Sometimes boundaries need multiple messengers. Sometimes grace requires witnesses.
V. The Geometry of Boundaries
Boundaries are the invisible coordinates of emotional geometry.
They define where empathy ends and accountability begins.
They protect the Teacher from becoming a “servant” … and the student from mistaking liberty for license.
When I require students to stand and bring their tests to the front … they groan.
What they perceive as control is rehearsal for adulthood.
The physical act of rising becomes metaphor.
To stand is to take responsibility for one’s work … to move toward closure … to present effort honestly.
Many fail this simple choreography, unable to place test booklets and answer sheets in their respective stacks correctly.
Such errors are not intellectual … but existential.
They expose how disorganization disguises itself as resistance.
These moments reveal that much of my teaching occurs beneath the surface of content.
I am teaching attentiveness to detail … respect for process … courage to approach.
Each act of standing, each quiet correction, each stern “put your phone away” is a coordinate on the same plane of growth.
VI. The Teacher’s Refuge
Between classes, I sought small sanctuaries.
Visiting CoachTM during his class’ geometry test reminded me that history repeats … but can also reconcile.
His student JT once played in my 2019 Nine Men’s Morris tournament (as a 4th-grader).
He no longer remembered the rules, but he remembered the thrill of victory and the humility of defeat.
When I showed him the photograph of his handshake with the tournament champion, he smiled.
Memory restored balance.
I felt gratitude for continuity … for the threads that outlast conflict.
Sharing essays with colleagues like CS became another form of self-care.
Encouraging others with writing is how I stabilize my own equilibrium.
Grace shared replenishes the giver.
VII. Reaching Out … and Pulling Back
The paradox of these days was that reaching out required restraint.
Every gesture of empathy demanded an equal measure of boundary.
To comfort a colleague is easy … to correct a student is harder … to do both … within hours of each other … tests the soul.
I am learning that leadership in the classroom mirrors leadership in life.
Boundaries protect compassion from depletion.
Without them, empathy curdles into exhaustion.
With them, empathy matures into respect.
The phrase “wise man” echoed long after PCC and TW said it.
Wisdom in this context means teaching without over-explaining … guiding without guilt … listening without surrender.
It means allowing silence to finish sentences that advice cannot.
It means recognizing that some students, like DL and JW, are performing sincerity because sincerity still feels foreign.
Their performances are practice.
My patience must be rehearsal.
The days closed without spectacle.
No major outbursts.
No epiphanies.
Only a quiet awareness that grace has seasons … that boundaries are blessings … and that both can coexist within the same lesson plan.
VIII. Conclusion — The Quiet Math of Mercy
Reaching out while respecting boundaries is the new arithmetic of my profession.
Addition looks like empathy … subtraction looks like silence … division looks like delegation … multiplication looks like patience.
The sum is peace.
Each condolence offered … each boundary redrawn … each conversation withheld … contributed to that equation.
The result was not perfection … but proportion.
Grace without structure becomes indulgence.
Structure without grace becomes tyranny.
Balance between them becomes wisdom.
By Tuesday afternoon I felt neither triumphant nor defeated.
I felt aligned.
The students were still learning.
So was I.
Boundaries had kept the days from unraveling.
Grace had kept it human.
Selah.
(The "Follow The Leader (changED - Volume 2)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
(The "changED (Volume 1)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
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I am a “standup storyteller.”
I fuse rap, spoken word (poetry), oration (traditional public speaking), singing, and teaching into messages of hope, healing, and change that I write, direct, and produce to help people who help people.
Everything must change - and stay changED.
Tradition begins and ends with change.
Change begins with me and the renewing of my mind ... then continues through efforts to effect small-group discipleship (equipping others to equip others) with audiences that respect and embrace mentoring, mediation, and problem solving as tools of change.
I am the product of my mentoring relationships, peacemaking (and peacekeeping), and problem-solving ability.
My education began when I finished school.
After school, I enrolled in a lifelong curriculum that includes classes in ministry, entrepreneurship, stewardship, literacy, numeracy, language, self-identity, self-expression, and analysis / synthesis.
My projects execute a ministry that has evolved from wisdom earned through lessons learned.
I want to share this wisdom to build teams of "triple threat" fellows - mentors, mediators, and problem solvers.
We will collaborate in simple, powerful ways that allow us to help people who help people.
I now know that power is work done efficiently (with wise and skillful use of resources, interests, communication, and expertise).
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